Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio 2010 will feature expanded snippets available in the
HTML editor window. These snippets will dramatically change the way you
write ASPX markup. For instance, if you were to add a TextBox to the
page as soon as you begin typing <asp:TextBox... the snippet will take over and add in the ID and runat attribute.
Further, consider adding a RequiredFieldValidator
to the page and the amount of work required in the past to properly
configure the control. With the new snippets if you add a validator
directly next to the TextBox you created previously, the snippet will automatically fill out the markup for the control, populating the ControlToValidate attribute, add the id and runat attributes and position your cursor inside the ErrorMessage attribute. Hand-coding has never been so easy!
Note: You’ll never have to type runat="server" again!
Further enhancements include the ability to triple-click an
expansive element like a table and the editor selects the entire
table’s markup. Want to surround that table with some additional
markup? Just start typing with the table selected and your markup is
inserted around the selected code.
ASP.NET Innovation
The ASP.NET platform has enjoyed a number of out-of-band updates in
the form of AJAX, Dynamic Data and MVC, but the core of WebForms has
remained without an update for a while. The reason is that the core of
WebForms is dependent on System.Web, which is loaded by IIS.
This limitation has the attention of the ASP.NET team and in the
future they are looking for ways to ship out-of-band releases on the
core of WebForms. Until then we wait for the official release of
ASP.NET 4.0 which will include the follow updates to WebForms:
- Control of Control IDs: ASP.NET developers will finally have
total control over the ClientID that is rendered to the page for each
control. For simple scenarios you simply provide the ID value and in a
data-bound context you can provide the key and replacement tag. For
instance if you have a control in a data-bound control and you want the
key to be "lbl" then the controls will have IDs consistent with lbl1,
lbl2, lbl3 and so on.
Scott Galloway has an excellent post on the upcoming client ID changes: Way too much information on Control IDs and ASP.NET 4.0 Client Id Enhancements
- Humble ViewState: Programming on the web often requires
storing state somewhere. Using session state is prone to timeouts and
can create problems in a server farm/garden environment. Many times the
best place to persist data is in the HTML document itself. This logic
is what drove the ASP.NET team to first implement ViewState, but an
eager implementation (requiring parent controls to enable ViewState and
other requirements) created bloated pages with unnecessary ViewState
shoved up to the client.
The next generation of ViewState allows for granular control over which
controls require ViewState. The default template for "4.0" project may
even have ViewState turned off by default.
- Dynamic Image Support: ASP.NET will feature rich image
support giving developers an easy way to manipulate and maintain images
on the web. Features include an image handler base class that is
responsible for converting byte arrays to images and back again. A
server control that calls the handler and helps pass parameters for
uniquely identifying image data as well as stamping for cache support.
The cache may be configured to cache on the server, the client or in
both locations. Images are manipulated by a set of transforms which
include resizing and watermarking among others.
- IQueryable BusinessLogicDataSource: This new data source
will feature query blocks which expose a declarative LINQ syntax to
help create dynamic where clauses to append to search queries. The
SearchExpression query block allows you to easily add "starts with",
"ends with" and "contains" type of constraints to a query. The
RangeExpression will read minimum and maximum values to constrain the
range of a field. The LINQ syntax is generated when the page data binds
sends the fully-constrained to the query to the server once all the
parameters are known. Attributes associated with methods on the
business logic layer will tell the data source which methods to run to
select, insert, update and delete objects. The data source will work
against a provider to interface with Linq to SQL, Linq to Enties, POCOs
and more.
Dynamic Data
The Dynamic Data updates are spread among solutions for WebForms as
well as MVC. Really the term "Dynamic Data" does injustice to the
features as really they are becoming simply features of existing and
new controls which are really just ASP.NET data controls.
For what you think of today as Dynamic Data, expect to see further work in the following areas:
- Entity Templates: Much like a field template, but more of a
container for markup and DynamicControls which can provide templating
for an entire row of data rather than a single field.
- Database Inheritance: Provide scaffold pages that will recognize database inheritance and provide CRUD capabilities for these tables.
- Many to Many Relationships: Scaffolding will render check
box lists to allow selection of many to many related data. (David Ebbo
writes about this new feature in: A ‘Many To Many’ field template for Dynamic Data)
Use the Dynamic Control in a non-List Scenario?
The team is working on strategies for using the DynamicControl in
situations where you are displaying a single record (and are outside
the context of a list control).
Today a single record would bind to the FormView which supports the
DynamicControl. Unfortunately FormView renders as a table in order
provide places to hook in CSS classes. The FormView will soon feature a
mode where you can turn off markup rendering all together so only the
markup you provide is rendered.
There is talk among Scott and his team of the creation of an
ItemView which may be a more natural fit for this type of scenario to
compliment the ListView control.
Dyanmic Data & MVC
Out of respect of the culture surrounding MVC the team has chosen to
implement Dynamic Data support backward to MVC. They began with adding
HTML helpers and implementations for field/entity templates and
databinding logic, leaving scaffolding for the end. This will ensure
that Dynamic Data will work under MVC for those who choose to opt out
of the scaffolding features.
In a seemingly controversial move, the team is implementing a
version of ViewState for MVC! While the implementation details differ
from traditional ViewState found in WebForms the technique of state
persistence in a hidden HTML element will find its way to MVC.
In the interview, Scott poses the question of how one might
implement optimistic concurrency in an MVC application. You may choose
to implement a time stamp field or set aside the previous values for
later comparison. If you choose to review old values then the state of
this object must persist somewhere. So the team is looking to support
developers who may choose a number of different approaches to the same
problem.
Future Dynamic Data implementations for MVC will feature a
controller with virtual methods for insert, update and delete. Using
virtual methods obviously means that developers will have the option to
over-ride and replace any methods they see fit.
Resources